Three in four women. One law worth defending.

What female genital mutilation is

Female genital mutilation (FGM) covers all procedures that partially or totally remove the external female genitalia, or otherwise injure the female genital organs, for non-medical reasons.² It has no health benefits and causes lasting harm.

The World Health Organization groups FGM into four types. Type I is the partial or total removal of the clitoral glans. Type II adds the removal of the labia minora. Type III, infibulation, narrows the vaginal opening. Type IV covers all other harmful procedures, such as pricking, piercing or cauterising.² In The Gambia, Types I and II are the most common, usually performed by a traditional practitioner known locally as a ngansingba.

“FGM is recognized internationally as a violation of the human rights of girls and women. It reflects deep-rooted inequality between the sexes.”

World Health Organization

Because FGM is done to girls who cannot consent, international bodies treat it as gender-based violence and a violation of the rights of the child. That framing matters. It moves FGM out of the realm of custom to be debated and into the realm of harm to be prevented.

How widespread it is, and where it is heading

The Gambia has one of the highest FGM prevalence rates in the world. National surveys place the share of women aged 15 to 49 who have been cut at roughly three in four, a figure that has moved only slowly over a decade.

Younger generations give cause for cautious hope. Comparisons between age groups suggest prevalence is starting to fall among girls, and attitudes are shifting: a growing share of Gambian women and men now say the practice should stop.³ Change is generational and uneven, though, and fragile enough that a single reversal in the law could undo years of progress.

The timing of harm

In The Gambia, cutting usually happens very young. About half of affected girls are cut before the age of five, and the large majority before adolescence.³ This shapes prevention. Parents and grandparents make the decision long before a girl can speak for herself, so effective advocacy has to reach the adults who hold that decision.

The pattern beneath the national average

A single national figure hides sharp differences. FGM in The Gambia clusters by region, ethnicity and wealth, and most of all by whether a woman's own mother was cut.

Prevalence is far higher in rural areas than in towns, and it follows certain ethnic communities closely, in some of which the practice is close to universal. The strongest single predictor is intergenerational: girls whose mothers underwent FGM are very likely to be cut themselves. The practice passes down family lines, which is why persuading one mother or one grandmother can protect a whole line of daughters.

The reasons given, and the reasons underneath

Families rarely cut their daughters to harm them. Social expectation, economic pressure and a mistaken belief that religion requires it combine to make cutting feel like protection. Understanding these pressures is the first step to changing them.

A rite of passage and a condition of marriage

In many communities, FGM marks a girl's passage into womanhood and is seen as a precondition for marriage. An uncut girl may be called unclean or unmarriageable, so loving parents may cut their daughters precisely to secure their future. Awareness work has to dismantle this logic: the belief that a girl must be harmed to be accepted.

Control of sexuality and family honour

The practice is often justified as a way to preserve virginity and protect family honour, placing a community's ideas about chastity on a child's body.

Religion: often invoked, never required

FGM is sometimes presented as a religious duty, particularly in some Muslim communities. It needs to be said clearly: Islam does not prescribe FGM, and religious scholars across the region have said so.⁴ Working with faith leaders to correct this belief has been one of the strongest levers for change.

Families cut their daughters to make them belong. Change what it means to belong, and the practice changes with it.

RFLD advocacy framing

A livelihood for practitioners

For traditional practitioners, FGM is also a source of income and standing. Lasting abandonment therefore often means offering them another livelihood and a public role in ending the practice, so they have no reason to defend it.

What the cutting costs

FGM has no medical benefit and many harms. They range from immediate injury to lifelong physical and psychological damage, and their severity depends on the type of cutting, the girl's age and the conditions in which it is done.

The risks in childbirth deserve particular attention. Women who have undergone FGM face higher risks during delivery, including prolonged labour, tearing and postpartum haemorrhage, dangers that grow where emergency care is scarce.⁵ The harm follows a girl into motherhood and reaches the next generation.

This is why FGM is treated as a public health issue as well as a rights issue. Every cutting prevented means dignity protected, and also infections, haemorrhages and childbirth deaths avoided.

The 2015 ban

In December 2015, The Gambia amended its Women's Act to prohibit FGM outright, joining the growing number of African states that have legislated against the practice.

A law is only as strong as its enforcement. For years after 2015, prosecutions were rare, and the first convictions came only in 2023. That case, described in the next section, triggered a political backlash.⁶ Advocacy has had to focus on this gap between the text and daily practice, turning a statute on paper into a norm communities actually follow.

The year the ban was almost lost

In 2024, The Gambia came within a parliamentary vote of becoming the first country in the world to reverse a ban on FGM. The campaign to stop the repeal became a defining moment for the region's women's movement.

1. August 2023 · First convictions

   The law is enforced at last

   Three women are convicted and fined for cutting infant girls, the first sentences under the 2015 ban. Supporters of the practice pay their fines and present the case as an attack on tradition and faith.

2. March 2024 · Repeal bill introduced

   A bill to undo the ban

   A private member's bill to repeal the prohibition passes its second reading in the National Assembly with the backing of influential religious figures. Rights bodies warn of a precedent that could spread across the continent.

3. Spring 2024 · Mobilisation

   Survivors, doctors and advocates respond

   Women's organisations, health professionals, survivors and rights groups, RFLD among the civil society voices across West Africa, answer with public testimony, legal argument and coordinated advocacy.

4. July 2024 · Repeal defeated

   The ban holds

   The National Assembly rejects the repeal bill and the 2015 prohibition stays in force. The vote is a reprieve rather than a final settlement, and it showed how contested the protection remains.⁷

5. 2024 to 2025 · Continued pressure

   The fight moves to the courts and communities

   Opponents of the ban have pursued a constitutional challenge before the Supreme Court, and reported cases, including the death of an infant girl after cutting in 2025, show the practice continues despite the law.⁸

The lesson shapes this brief's conclusion. Legal protection is a foundation to build on and defend. It needs funding and vigilance, and it needs the slower work of changing the beliefs that put repeal on the agenda in the first place.

Hidden risks: medicalisation and cross-border cutting

As the law and public opinion turn against FGM, two quieter trends can undermine progress: cutting performed by health workers, and families taking girls across borders to avoid the ban.

Medicalisation

Some families turn to nurses, midwives or other health workers in the belief that a "clinical" procedure is safer. International health bodies are clear that medicalised FGM is still FGM. It causes the same lifelong harm, and it lends the practice a false legitimacy that makes abandonment harder.² Health workers are among the most trusted voices in their communities, which also makes them powerful allies when they refuse to cut and explain why.

Crossing borders

The Gambia shares long, open borders with Senegal, and families and communities live on both sides. Where enforcement tightens in one country, girls may be taken to the other, or cut during holidays with relatives. Ending FGM in The Gambia therefore depends partly on regional cooperation: shared data, aligned laws and joint community work across the border.

Silence as a shield

Because the practice is now illegal, it is more often hidden. Cutting at younger ages and fewer public ceremonies make it harder to detect and harder to measure. Monitoring has to rely on community networks, schools and health services, working with families rather than only against them.

Commitments The Gambia has already made

The case against FGM rests on more than Gambian law. It is anchored in international and regional treaties the country has ratified, which make protection a legal duty.

These instruments give advocates firm ground. The Gambia is being asked to honour commitments it has already made. Presenting the ban as a sovereign promise kept, rather than an outside imposition, is central to persuading sceptical audiences.

RFLD in The Gambia

RFLD, the Réseau des Femmes Leaders pour le Développement, is a pan-African feminist network of 1,143 member organisations in more than 35 African countries. RFLD is registered as a non-governmental organisation in The Gambia, and its Banjul office serves as its liaison with the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights.

That presence gives RFLD a particular role. From Banjul, RFLD carries the evidence and testimony of Gambian and West African women's organisations into the continental human rights system, and brings continental standards, such as Article 5 of the Maputo Protocol, back to national advocates. RFLD's work combines policy advocacy, grants to grassroots organisations and the protection of women human rights defenders, many of whom face hostility for speaking out against FGM.

The approach that works is rarely one campaign. It layers education, faith engagement, survivor leadership and economic alternatives, meeting the practice at each point where it is held in place.

The road to 2030

The Gambia has a ban, shifting attitudes and a survivor-led movement that defeated an attempt to turn back the clock. Ending FGM by 2030, the Sustainable Development Goal target, is possible if this work continues.

• Protect the law. The 2024 repeal came close. Cross-party consensus, public education and vigilance in the courts are needed to keep the 2015 ban secure.
• Enforce it wisely. Prosecution must go hand in hand with prevention, so enforcement supports abandonment and does not drive the practice underground.
• Invest in girls' education, including sexual and reproductive health education, the strongest long-term protection.
• Support women's decisions about their own bodies and their daughters', and stand behind the mothers and grandmothers who choose to stop.
• Engage men and faith leaders to dismantle the marriage and religious pressures that keep the practice alive.
• Work across borders with Senegal and the wider region on data, law and community programmes.
• Fund community-led work at the scale the problem demands, for the full generational timeline that real change requires.